Feeling Means You're Alive
by bulmablue-eyes
Summary: Draco does the only thing he can to help himself cope with the scars left by his father. Warning: contains cuttingselfharm and references to abuse.


**Feeling Means You're Alive**

Disclaimer – I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters. Never did, never will. If I did, I wouldn't be sat up at 1am worrying about student debts!

**_Warning – this story contains brief mentions of abuse, although never in detail, and graphic descriptions of cutting (aka self-, self-injury, self-abuse, self-mutilation, whatever you want to call it). If you don't like this kind of thing, then don't read on._**

Thoughts of home drifted through Draco's mind, images of his father, of beatings and worse; of his mother, and her complete disregard of a mother's natural instinct to protect her child. His whole life he had been beaten and abused, in every possible sense of the word, and, for his whole life, his mother, the one woman who should have fought to protect him, had stood aside and watched.

Sitting on his bed in Slytherin's dungeons, Draco was feeling nothing. Over the years and years of abuse, he had mastered the art of removing himself from his body, of blocking out the pain and the trauma, so that instead of feeling the agony and terror that he should have felt, instead, he felt nothing. Now, though, this desperately established defence mechanism, created just so that the small, suffering boy could force himself to survive, was beyond his control. It was no longer only when abused and beaten that Draco found himself empty of feeling. In recent years it had spilled over into his every day life. During classes, halfway through conversations, even during games of Quidditch, Draco's mind and soul would float away from his body, and he would become numb. Over time, it became to Draco as if he were dead.

Holding the small, razor-sharp blade in his hand, Draco did the one thing he could to make himself feel alive again. He drew the blade across the back of his left wrist, watching as the warm, bright red blood rose up from his veins to fill the new deep split in his porcelain skin.

This had been Draco's only method of survival for the last couple of years, now. Unable to ask for help, knowing that nobody would help the cold, cruel ice-prince of Slytherin, he had searched for the one thing that could wake him up inside, using knives, razors, needles, pencil sharpener blades, anything he could find to make him feel alive again.

He knew what people would say if they knew. That he was mad, or attention seeking, or that he was just trying to kill himself, and was too stupid to know how to do it properly. The slightly better informed would say he was angry or frustrated and needed some way to release the anger, or that he hated himself and wanted to purge the evil from his body. They were all wrong, though. If only he were angry or frustrated or hateful. At least then he would be feeling something. Even if those feelings were painful and destructive, they were still _feelings_. Hot, raw emotions coursing through his veins, filling his heart. Instead, though, all he felt was dead inside.

So, he did the one thing he could to feel alive; he drew the blade across his forearm again, once again watching as blood filled the wound. Shimmering pearls of crimson blood rose up out of the cuts, growing and growing until two of the glimmering droplets would combine and trickle, almost tickling as it left a trail of warm, red life across his arm, travelling around to the other side of his wrist, standing out brightly, a stark contrast to the pale, white skin of his wrist.

Still feeling nothing, Draco cut again, and again, and again, until more than ten red, bleeding cuts stood out on his skin. It was then that the pain started, and, with that cue, he knew that he had done enough. That was the way it had been all along. He would cut, and he would cut, and, whether after two cuts or twenty, when he started to feel pain, when the stinging, almost burning, would begin on his skin, he would know he was done. Pain meant he was feeling something. It may not be something nice, but pain was still feeling, and feeling meant he was alive.

A/N: There we go, all done. Please review, just no flames!


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